


all the pretty girls on a saturday night

by clumsyhearts



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, buckle in lads, gilbert please admit your feelings already, in which i am an idiot, this was an excuse for me to write harvard gilbert and working anne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22767280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsyhearts/pseuds/clumsyhearts
Summary: aw c'mon, what's a boy to dowhen all the pretty girls can't measure to you?Cambridge girls don't hold a candle to the redheaded girl that can't leave Gilbert's dreams.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 32
Kudos: 237





	all the pretty girls on a saturday night

**Author's Note:**

> fun! wrote a song called "All the Pretty Girls" that I adore. I have this longstanding idea that a modern Gilbert would have gone to Harvard Medical on scholarship and Anne would have worked in Providence, Rhode Island as a nanny to save up for college. A simple math equation for a quick little story I had to rip out of my head.  
>   
> (In the same universe as [you're so good to be a witness to my sounds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356223). If you want more of my modern Anne and Gil.)

_aw c’mon, what’s a boy to do  
when all the pretty girls can’t measure to you?_

.

Gilbert’s rarely had issues with his social life.

__

Growing up, it was easy. Kids were obsessed with him because he travelled so frequently and had a dad with a terminal illness. It was easy, being the enigma of quiet, unchanging Avonlea. When he returned after a long summer abroad, seeing the world with his permanently sickening father, the boys in his class would fawn over his stories of great pirating and adventure and the girls would fawn over his curls.

__

(Conveniently, he left out the parts where his dad couldn’t leave his own bed for days on end, where Gilbert watched movie after movie on public channels and ordered room service. Where Gilbert balanced their piles of cash that John always made sure to acquire from the Avonlea bank before they left – where the world was quiet, and scary, for a few days.)

__

Until Anne had shown up, the spotlight for strangest life stories was easily won by him and his travel adventures. Until Anne had shown up, Gilbert was uncontested in amount of countries visited (7) and longest time spent away from home (5 months). Until Anne had shown up, Avonlea was quite content with just one strange family, and they could point fingers and donate stews and mutter behind closed doors all they wanted about the _poor Blythes_. But Anne’s arrival shook the entire town; and they did not give her the courtesy of gossiping about her behind closed doors.

__

Really, until Gilbert stood up for Anne at church after the Cuthberts had been rudely kicked out on the basis of prejudice, Avonlea was quite shaken by the notion that _two_ strange families could exist. They’d get over it. But Gilbert never took a hit among the children for his status as a strange, non-traditional child. He remained popular even through his senior year – only, at parties and gatherings, _Anne_ was the one requested to tell stories of her travels and the amount of countries she’d visited (10) and the longest time she’d spent away from home (12 years). 

__

(He couldn’t be upset. She told the stories much better than he ever had.) 

__

But college is a completely different story, Gilbert discovers within a few months. Harvard is home to kids with wealth unimaginable to a small-town, orphaned, kid-with-a-terminally-ill-father. His full-ride medical scholarship and two jobs separate him from the kids here, who whipped out their credit cards without even thinking about it. It’s in watching the kids at Harvard that he truly understands what it is to be poor. He’s been poor his whole life – but it only mattered _now_. 

__

These kids have him beat in wild vacations and hookups and stories and drugs and sex and parties and life. Small-town Avonlea with barely a twenty-dollar-bill for spending cannot even hope to compare to New York City life with Daddy’s credit card and barely a care in the world. Harvard kids were stupidly rich and stupidly in control of their entire universe. They clicked together in their cliques. And they wouldn’t gossip, only stare and mutter about Gilbert’s jeans and shoes and how everything about him screamed “struggling medical student.” 

__

It is in times like these that Gilbert appreciates having Anne on his side; Anne-of-dreams, Anne who lived in Providence working her ass off with the sheer hope of attending community college, Anne who knew better than anyone what it was like being really, truly, _poor_. He has her contact curated in his phone, but her number is memorized in his head. Coming back to the dorm from his internship at the hospital, he punches the well-worn digits into his phone, jams his earbuds into the jack, and waits for her voice to settle in his soul. 

__

(He’s got the quirks of her voice memorized. When she’s tired, it drops, and she mutters. When he’s anxious, he listens to videos and audio recordings of her stories or audition tapes that she’d send him, and it’s almost physical, the way her voice untangles the knots in his shoulders and relaxes his overworked heart. When she speaks in French – the language she was forced to learn to survive in orphanages and foster homes in Quebec – he’s always fascinated by the ways the syllables wrap around her teeth and tongue. He understands only a few words that she’s taught him from mere exposure, but he likes hearing her speak it, anyway. The way she says _Gilbert_ – when she’s absolutely ecstatic, after a performance, when she’s just found the perfect chair to upholster, after his rugby matches – knocks the wind out of him. There is so much to appreciate about knowing her.) 

__

“Gil, you won’t _believe_ the day I’ve had,” she says, and Gilbert lets out the breath of anticipation he didn’t even know he was holding. 

__

He tells her about the social circles of Harvard, mostly just to hear her rant about rich kids and privileged kids and _assholes_ (and the way she drags it out, and then swears in rapid French, never fails to stretch his lips over his teeth in that contagious grin he reserves for Anne). Tonight’s call regards the kids in his sociology course, who, during their debate about healthcare, said that if people couldn’t afford healthcare then they couldn’t afford to live. 

__

“Anne, I about exploded,” Gilbert swears to her. If she had been standing in front of her in the crowded bus in front of the clan of children and their parents, he would have started signing. As it stands, he mutters a few choice German words over the phone, and her laugh – her _laugh!_ – rings in his welcoming ears. “I was like, swear to God, ‘Where I come from, socialized healthcare is the norm. And we haven’t imploded as a system of government! And, God help me, if my dad hadn’t been supported by our healthcare he would have died as soon as he was diagnosed with leukemia because we could not have afforded the expensive treatment here.’ And they were staring at me as if I was speaking some foreign language!” 

__

“The language of the poor,” Anne laughs. She speaks in a bit of unintelligible French to her landlord – a nice old lady who speaks limited English and jumps on any opportunity to converse in her mother tongue – and then turns her attention back to Gilbert. “What did they say?” 

__

“Nothing. But my chances of hanging out with any of them are totally shot now. Now I’m the weird socialist from Canada with the dead dad.” 

__

“They’re assholes, fuck ‘em.” 

__

(When she swears, his heart skips a couple of steps.) 

__

Gilbert repeats the phrase in German. 

__

“Are you with kids right now?” 

__

“I’m on the bus. There are three families of children in front of me. Translate my German anger for a while.” 

__

“Or I could just swear for you,” she says, and he hears her door close. (She’s home. One thing he likes about their schedules – they line up well. She gets home most nights as he’s making his way to his dorm.) 

__

“I’ll text you a long string of words later,” Gilbert says. “Pardon my French in advance.” 

__

“Consider it pardoned,” Anne says. He can hear her grin over the phone. “God, I’m starving. What should I eat? Also, isn’t your roommate also on scholarship? You should hang out with him.” 

__

“Harley’s on scholarship, yeah,” Gilbert says, then, to a lady with a huge knitted bag, “Excuse me, ma’am, this is my stop.” As he’s pushing his way onto the platform, Anne’s banging about in her little kitchen. (He’s been to her small apartment exactly once, as he was helping her settle in before his first week at school, but since then, she’s probably rearranged and redecorated twenty times. Gilbert is therefore left to imagine that there’s probably some gingham curtains and spindly plants and jam jars half full and mismatched plates and pots and pans everywhere. She belongs in a farmhouse. In the city, she makes do with decoration.) “You should make pasta. That good stuff you like, the… _shit_ , what’s the white sauce again?” 

__

“ _Béchamel_?” 

__

“No, it starts with a vowel…” 

__

“Oh, alfredo. You know, they’re kind of the same thing – But regardless. Go hang out with Harley. You’ve got Saturday nights off. Take advantage. Go party.” 

__

“Anne, I don’t even have a fake ID,” he laughs. “I’m leagues behind these kids. These kids have had fake IDs since they were old enough to walk. I can’t afford to drink in Cambridge. It’s too expensive.” 

__

“ _Quatsch_ ,” she chides. (Her German accent is much more European than his.) “You’re acting like an old bachelor. You don't have to drink. Just go. Hang out with your roommate. He seems nice.” 

__

This is how he finds himself on Saturday night sitting on a worn leather couch next to his roommate, a boy from small-town America with medical aspirations, and his roommate’s nice, reliable brown-haired girlfriend, and a gaggle of friends that accompany them on their excursions. Gilbert can’t keep their names straight. There’s two Davids and more than a few Matts and at least three Ashleys. Harley’s reliable girlfriend is the group’s only Marie (“After Curie,” she jokes, and Anne would have _loved_ her). Besides her and the Ashleys, there’s a Heather, and an Olivia, and a Juliet. 

__

Harley is three shots in when he turns to Gilbert and says, “You and Olivia would be cute,” and something inside Gilbert screams at the mere notion. Marie laughs at her boyfriend and quips, “Obviously Gil should go after Heather,” and Harley shoves her off the barstool. 

__

Gilbert hasn’t been drinking, but he confesses anyways that he’s not keen on Harvard girls. Marie pretends to be offended, which sets Harley giggling, and turns the corners of Gilbert’s mouth up. 

__

“Whyever not, good lad?” Marie says in the fakest British accent he’s ever heard, and he snorts so hard water comes out of his nose. 

__

“A lot of them just aren’t sensible,” he admits once he’s recovered, and then rubs his temples. “No, that sounded bad. I mean… I just mean that I didn’t grow up in a town where whipping out your credit card and spending a thousand dollars in one store was commonplace, or respectable. The girls I grew up with made their own clothes and learned to take care of a farm and knew basic life skills… A lot of these girls would be lost without their room-cleaning service. And it’s not like I’m looking for someone that can take care of me. I just… I just want to be in a serious relationship with someone that I could really end up with. I’m not fond of two-week relationships. I’m just not fond of people who can’t think for themselves or have never worked a day in their lives.” 

__

(“I’m just not fond of people who cannot empathize with my socioeconomic status,” he thinks, but he’s thinking too far into it.) 

__

Harley and Marie nod soberly. 

__

“It makes sense,” Harley finally says. “That’s fair, to know what you like in a girl. You know?” 

__

“Do you deny that Olivia’s cute, though?” Marie laughs. Her laugh is rough and starts in the back of her throat. It’s honest. 

__

“She’s cute, sure,” Gilbert finally says. “Happy?” 

__

Marie stands up and loops her arm around Gilbert’s neck. “Very,” she whispers in his ear, and Harley chuckles, and her breath smells like liquor and vodka and olives. (It smells new. Not bad – just new.) 

__

Harley and Marie invite Gilbert every Saturday night on their adventures. They’re not fond of dates, he finds. They like going to fancy dinner and getting into belching contests and reciting Shakespeare. Marie’s from a big foster family – also a scholarship kid – and Harley hails from “Fuck-all, Virginia” and a single-parent home. Gilbert, an orphan with years of medical debt and who lives with the only black family in Avonlea, Canada, meshes with them well. 

__

“You’d love them,” he says to Anne on one Sunday morning on his trek to the library. (She gardens on Sundays for her landlord when the weather is nice. He can hear the weeds getting torn up from the dirtbeds. Her hair is probably falling over her face in those loose curly bangs he likes to tangle his fingers in. She’ll have dirt under her fingernails for days. She never wears gloves when she gardens.) “Marie’s a linguistics major with a specialization in French. She speaks it with your accent. And Harley’s a medical kid like me. They’re just the type of people that I genuinely enjoy.” 

__

“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” Anne murmurs over the phone, “but I definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent fucking _told you so_.” 

__

“Yeah, yeah,” Gilbert laughs. “Anne-of-dreams, you know all.” 

__

(If she knew, if she knew, if she _knew_ …) 

__

Marie points out every pretty girl in Cambridge and asks Gilbert his feelings. Some of them he knows and provides a personal case against. Some of them he leaves Marie satisfied by admitting that they are pretty. Cambridge is full of rich, pretty girls, from rich, pretty homes, in rich, pretty towns. Gilbert _knows_ this. 

__

One Saturday night in mid-December, nine days away from finals, Harley points, without any semblance of secrecy, at a blonde who’s leaning over the bar to order a drink from the short-haired bartender. She makes martinis with ease. Anne would love this bartender, Gilbert knows; she would strike up a conversation with the girl and get her to open up and fall in love so quickly. (She tore out his heart from his chest, and it’s fine, really, _fine_ that she keeps it locked up in the stained-white cupboards an hour away in Providence. He would fall in love with her again and again and again if she asked.) 

__

“Her?” Harley asks, about the blonde. Gilbert shakes his head, prompting a groan from his roommate. “Come on, we gotta get you a date. You can’t third-wheel me and Marie forever.” 

__

“Don’t _push_ the baby,” Marie says, petting Gilbert’s curls roughly with her drunken laugh. Gilbert’s cup of water shakes with the force of the pat. “But seriously, she’s pretty.” 

__

“Sure,” Gilbert agrees easily. (It’s become force of habit. They’re all pretty. They will never go out with him. He will never ask.) 

__

His phone vibrates on the counter, and he glances down at it. A late night – it’s nearing midnight – and Anne’s calling him. 

__

He reaches for his phone and goes to stand up. Marie and Harley are drunk, and they still notice immediately. (The way his posture changes, the way the corners of his mouth tilt upwards, the softness around his eyes.) 

__

“Oh, my God,” Marie murmurs. There’s something almost evangelical in her tone. “Oh, God, Gilbert, who’s Anne?” 

__

“The redhead?” Harley asks, and Gilbert nods absentmindedly and says “I’ll be right back” and retreats outside to take the call. 

__

“Hey,” he says. The loudness of the bar falling quickly behind him into his memory, he focuses on the voice he knows as well as his own, and it’s not long before he’s sitting on top of an empty table on the outdoor lounge of the brewery. Mouth tilting upwards uncontrollably, listening intently to the nonsensical story of her day, wanting so badly to watch her quirks play out in front of him, _Anne, Anne, Anne_. 

__

She talks for maybe two minutes. She knows he’s out with Harley and Marie. “I just needed to tell you that story,” she laughs, and then says, “Okay, go have fun. Call me tomorrow sometime.” 

__

The blonde walks past him and waves. He’s lost in his thoughts. He’s not entirely sure if he waves back. 

__

When he returns, Marie and Harley have another round of martinis in front of them, and Marie pats Gilbert on the back. “You didn’t tell us you had a lady friend,” she says. Gilbert chuckles, mirth hidden in humor. 

__

“I don’t.” 

__

“Ah, _fuck_ that. You definitely like her. Anne?” 

__

“Come _off_ it, she’s just my friend.” 

__

“A friend that calls you at midnight? That makes you smile and act like a fucking dumbass?” Marie hits him on the shoulder. “I love you, man, but I have never seen you smile so softly for any reason. Even for your medical textbooks, which you are _literally_ in love with! Her name showed up on your screen and you grinned like a fool. None of the girls here make you grin like that. _God_ , grow _up_ , _tell_ her that she makes you smile like an idiot! Y' only live once, Gilly-boy, better spend all the time you can with the people you love.” 

__

Harley leans into her shoulder and kisses the base of her jaw before saying, “Gilbert, you talked to me about this redhead of yours. Tell me more. Why’s she so different from – ” he pushes himself off of Marie and scours the bar – “uh – ” finally pointing at a red-haired girl sitting in the corner – “her?” 

__

He glances at the girl in question. Her hair is a different red, a little bronzer, grown out at the roots and dyed. Her skin is too smooth, and her teeth are too straight, and there isn’t a single freckle. And her laugh – he can hear the giggle from here – isn’t natural or honest. It’s a Cambridge laugh. It’s a credit card laugh. (It’s an acquired taste.) 

__

Head in hands and smile adorning lips, Gilbert enlightens Marie and Harley about his Anne-of-dreams, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, Anne of a million homes and stories and adventures, Anne to outlive him, Anne who speaks five languages, Anne who knows how to get him out of depressive episodes, Anne who babysits his niece with him, Anne of crooked teeth and freckled skin and eclectic taste and chunky homemade leather boots and tangled hair, Anne who smells like _home_. 

__

(And, more personally. Anne who invades his dreams, Anne whose voice sings him to sleep, Anne who he sometimes can’t think of unless it’s at night, safely tucked into bed, Anne of ethereal joy and eternal sadness and terrifyingly honest feelings. Anne who makes him believe in growing, in failing, in falling – into love, into hatred, into knowledge – _Anne_.) 

__

“I don’t want to acquire the taste of Cambridge girls, Harley,” Gilbert says as they return to the dorm, waving off Marie – “Tell her, Gilbert, tell her!” – and unmaking their beds. 

__

“Yeah?” Harley says, lying prostrate on his bed, pillow over his eyes. 

__

It’s a long time before Gilbert responds, and Harley’s breathing is so soft that he’s not sure if his roommate is dreaming or awake. 

__

“There is not a girl in all of Cambridge that could measure to _her_.” 

.

(When he dreams, he dreams of honest red hair, of a warm body tucked under his arm, of murmuring. He dreams and he dreams and he dreams and he dreams.)

__

**Author's Note:**

> find me other places  
> on wattpad: [@ffairlyfloral](https://www.wattpad.com/user/ffairlyfloral)  
> on pinterest: [@ffairlyfloral](https://www.pinterest.com/ffairlyfloral/)  
> or right here on ao3: [@clumsyhearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsyhearts)


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